This is my manifesto—my plea to any new moms, seasoned moms, and soon to be moms crying about their bellies, their vaginas, their boobs, their thighs, their butts, their weight:

You don’t need your body back, and not just because you are beautiful for giving birth, which you are, but because you can’t need what you can’t have. If you try, you’ll drive yourself crazy.

And even if you eke out the body you demand, it won’t make you a better mother, a better woman, a better partner, a better person.

Free yourself of body based goals. Promise yourself you will work out, you will breathe, you will look at your body honestly, you will seek out professionals when you don’t have function, but promise yourself you will not demand anything of your body other than to be. To exist. To carry you through life. To change.

“You can’t go forward trying to get your body back.”

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